Brussels—The last year has been
a miserable one for those of us who believe in European unity, in a strong
transatlantic partnership, in NATO and in an authoritative role for the
United Nations.

Tempers have flared. But let us not forget a few home truths.

We should remind ourselves, first, how much the United States and Europe
need one another. A study just issued by the Center for Transatlantic
Relations reveals that:

For most of the past decade, Europe has accounted
for half of total global earnings of US companies.

Over the past eight years, US investment in the Netherlands
alone was twice what it was in Mexico and 10 times what it was in China.

There is more European investment in Texas than US
investment in Japan. So it would be hard to exaggerate the mutual economic
interests of the United States and Europe.

But the stakes, of course, are much higher than that. The real point is
that the US was born of Europe’s rib (to reverse the gender of Robert
Kagan’s famous "Mars and Venus" analogy). We have common
roots in the European enlightenment, and we share the body of ideas that
emerged from that period of emancipation from received authority. We have
worked together over the last half-century to fashion an international
legal order covering not just trade and security, but human rights, too,
and fundamental freedoms.

However sharp our differences from time to time, and however loudly we
may shout at one another, we have a very similar underlying worldview,
such as in our shared opposition to "total solutions"—whether
of communism, national socialism or religious fundamentalism.

Those who urge President George W. Bush to walk away from the United Nations
because, in Charles Krauthammer’s words, "the principal purpose
of the Security Council is not to restrain tyrants but to restrain the
United States," are unworthy of the great generation of US statesmen
who built up the rule of law through global institutions 50 and more years
ago. Luckily they represent a small minority in a US that remains determinedly
internationalist.

As we feel our way through a very difficult passage, not just in transatlantic
relations but Europe’s internal relations, too, it is important
that high emotions do not cause us to exaggerate our differences on foreign
policy. Even on the issue of the war in Iraq, the dispute has centered
on the question of whether, and if so when, it was right to foreclose
on Resolution 1441. None of us disagrees about the need to rid Iraq of
weapons of mass destruction. Nor have we any doubt that Iraq would be
better off without Saddam Hussein.

What lesson to draw as policy makers? That Europe and America should work
to preserve common interests, to minimize their differences and to maximize
their joint influence for good.

That means redoubling our work together to strengthen the world’s
defenses against international terrorism. There is already a great deal
of often technical and unglamorous work going on across the Atlantic over
a wide agenda, covering everything from the security of container traffic
and airlines to mutual extradition agreements, better controls against
money-laundering and help to developing countries to meet their counter-terrorist
obligations. We must push ahead, not least to ensure that new initiatives
like this home in effectively on curbing terrorism and do not inadvertently
restrict international trade and investment.

It means working harder than ever to develop our successful cooperation
in the Balkans after the horrors of the 1990s. The Dayton Accords could
not have been negotiated, nor the war in Kosovo won, without America—yet
it is the European Union that is now the major force for stability in
the region. The prospect of future membership in the EU provides essential
underpinning as these countries struggle to regain prosperity and freedom.
Not only is the EU by far the single largest assistance donor to the countries
of the Western Balkans, but we provide most of the peacekeeping troops,
too.

It is much the same story in Afghanistan, where the international community
is struggling to help put the country back on its feet after the years
of what was not so much state-sponsored terrorism as terrorist-sponsored
statehood. Again the EU, with its member states, has a bigger military
presence than the US and is the bigger donor—but we cooperate closely
in the service of a single strategy.

A major test over the coming months will be the Middle East peace process,
and the wider challenge of helping countries throughout the region to
cope with the fallout from the war in Iraq. The US and the EU have worked
with Russia and with the UN (in the so-called Quartet) on a road map that
would guarantee both Israel and Palestine statehood and security within
internationally recognized borders. The truth is that most people in the
region—rightly or wrongly—believe that the US represents the
interests of Israel. The US cannot, therefore, play the honest broker
alone, and there will be no lasting settlement without transatlantic and
wider regional cooperation.

On trade and economic policy, we need to do three things. First, we need
to work together to ensure that the World Trade Organization ministerial
meeting in Cancun in September is a success, to keep the Doha Development
Round of negotiations on track for completion in 2004. Second, given that
we still have a number of difficult disputes to manage—such as over
foreign sales corporations, steel and GMOs (genetically-modified organisms)—we
need to work harder than ever to promote WTO-compatible solutions. And
third, we must advance the positive agenda on trade—nitty-gritty
issues, such as advancing electronic tendering for procurement contracts
and solving trade disputes before they go into the WTO process. On all
these issues, we need to make real progress by the time of the next EU/US
summit in June.

There has been plenty of talk recently—and in both the EU and US—about
the need to insulate trade and economics from the war. Of course. But
we have to make that happen. It is not a question of crossing our fingers,
but of rolling up our sleeves.

We write this article as citizens of two countries, France and Britain,
that find their own relations strained and unsettled by current events,
just as the transatlantic link is under stress. Our simple appeal is that
people on all sides of the debate over Iraq should put away their megaphones,
acknowledge how much unites us across the Atlantic and recognize our shared
responsibility to provide international leadership.

In Europe, the stark realities made so clear in the current crisis must
give new impetus to the work underway to deepen the EU, and especially
to the search for a common and foreign security policy worthy of the name.
At the same time, Europe and America must redouble their efforts to strengthen
the imperfect but necessary system of international governance.

Cooperation between Europe and the US was never an optional
extra. This remains true on both sides of the Atlantic.